arXiv AI

Misalignment of Low-Loss Regions Causes Grokking

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Quantifying the Memorization-to-Generalization Transition: Scaling Laws and Phase Structure in Grokking

The study investigates the delayed transition from memorization to generalization—known as grokking—in two‑hidden‑layer MLPs trained on modular arithmetic. By exploring 384 hyperparameter configurations, the authors derive a power‑law scaling relation for the onset time of generalization, showing that data complexity dominates over model capacity. A clear phase boundary at weight decay around 1.0 separates grokking from non‑grokking regimes, and weight norm trajectories indicate implicit regularization during the transition.

By Anish Kataria
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

Why Does Train-Validation Separation Emerge? Update-Pressure Density Dynamics in Pretrained Backbones

The paper investigates why the train‑validation performance gap widens during fine‑tuning of pretrained models. It proposes a dynamic structural explanation: as training proceeds, updates shift from broadly reusable features to more example‑specific ones, increasing gradient heterogeneity and the gap. Experiments on synthetic ResMLP hierarchies, NLP models (RoBERTa, DeBERTa, Qwen) across six datasets, and vision models (ResNet‑18) confirm that higher reliance on private features correlates with larger accuracy gaps, supporting the proposed account.

By Yuchen Li, Mingyu Du, Zongqi Fan, Ken-Tye Yong, Nguyen H. Tran
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 11

Circuit Synchronization Precedes Generalization: Causal Evidence from Fourier Structure in Grokking Transformers

Grokking -- where a transformer on modular arithmetic suddenly transitions from near-chance to near-perfect validation accuracy -- is attributed to a Fourier circuit, but its timing, causal structure, and controllability remain poorly understood. We introduce the Frequency Synchronization Degree (FSD), a normalised, permutation-tested metric for Fourier circuit synchronisation requiring no prior circuit knowledge.